Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African ChristianityBerghahn Books, 01.05.2008 - 288 Seiten Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise ‘the Spirit’ and ‘the Letter’ as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between ‘charisma’ and ‘institution’ by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion. |
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... administration, on the other. Instead, this was a case of a prophet-healer who also served the function of secretary in the form of a personal union. In addition, this was not an example of what Max Weber has called the 'charisma of the ...
... administration' (Ranger 1975: 50-51) by writing letters to distant villages as well as baptismal lists (ibid.: 50), some ofwhich were 'in “pretendwriting”, obviously compiled by young men able to impress a congregation with their ...
... administration' mentioned above, African Christians issued, for example, membership and congregation cards,12 preacher certificates,13 and 'passports to heaven' (Andersson 1958: 160–61). They put the laws of their church into writing,14 ...
... administration, on the other hand, was striving to regulate and control the colonized by entangling them in a network of passes, statistics and files. Theirs represented an attempt to identify and ultimately shape realities through acts ...
... administration, however, was often rather critical with respect to such out-schools. A Native Commissioner's report for the year 1917, for example, states with regard to PMMS educational activities in the Gwembe Valley: There are four ...
Inhalt
1 | |
31 | |
33 | |
CH 2Passages configurations traces | 53 |
CH 3Schooled literacy schooled religion | 71 |
Part IILiterate Religion | 83 |
CH 4Literate cultures in a material world | 85 |
CH 5Indices to the scriptural | 95 |
CH 10Setting Texts in Motion | 145 |
CH 11Missions in writing | 155 |
CH 12Enablements to literacy | 169 |
Part IVBureaucracy in the PentecostalCharismatic mode | 181 |
CH 13Offices and the Dispersion of Charisma | 183 |
CH 14Positions of writers positions in writings | 201 |
CH 15Outlines for the future documents of the immediate | 213 |
CH 16Bureaucracy inbetween | 227 |
CH 6The fringes of Christianity | 105 |
CH 7Thoughts about Religions of the book | 117 |
Part IIIWays of Reading | 123 |
CH 8Texts readers spirit | 125 |
CH 9Evanescence and the necessity of intermediation | 137 |
CH 17Epilogue | 243 |
Bibliography | 247 |
Index | 267 |
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Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity Thomas G. Kirsch Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2008 |
Spirits and Letters: Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity Thomas G. Kirsch Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2011 |